by Rose Tremain
One evening in April, the lute-maker came up to my rooms to show me an instrument he had made, the sound of which, he said, was the sound he had heard in his mind all his life but had never achieved until then.
To celebrate this new perfection, he brought with him a flagon of sack and, without noticing what we did, we consumed it all, little by little, so that the hour grew very late and our minds utterly addled and foolish. And in my drunkenness, I told this lute-maker about my dreams of a place that had once been mine and how every night, now, I returned there like a spirit and how I did not believe this dreaming would ever end. He looked at me with his eyes that are nervous and bright like the eyes of a buzzard and said to me: "Why do you not go there, Doctor Merivel? Why do you not see it again and then this seeing of it in your dreams will cease."
The next day, I wrote to Will Gates.
I told him that I had been possessed by a great longing to return to Bidnold, just for a brief time, no more than a day and a night, so that I could remind myself what it looked like and see with my own eyes "certain combinations of colour and light, Will, that I do not think exist anywhere in the world but there." I said I would be content to sleep in one of the servants' rooms, or even in the stables with Danseuse, because all that I wished to do was to visit the place "like someone invisible and not in any way to pretend it is mine or try to possess it again except in my mind."
While I waited for Will's reply, my dreaming of Norfolk was interrupted one night by a dream of Whittlesea and when I woke from it I decided that if indeed I was going to make the journey to Bidnold, I would not return directly to London, but go on to the Fens and tell the Keepers about the death of Katharine and the survival of Margaret and beg of them some other small relic of Pearce to replace the book consumed by the fire. And once I had decided upon this second visit, I no longer thought of this pilgrimage into the past as a foolish and self-indulgent thing. It seemed, on the contrary, to be a journey of the utmost importance: until I had made it, I would not be able to begin upon the future set down in my palm or indeed upon any version of the future whatsoever or come at last to any ending of this story.
I did not have to wait very long for a letter from Will and when it came it woke in me the same mirthful delight I had once felt in a stage coach at Will's first sighting of London.
0, Sir Robert, said the letter, You cannot know how much we are all here every one of us who remember you filled with joy at this Great Coming Event which is your Arrival at Bidnold.
Please, Sir, be assured we will make all very fit and nice for this fortunate Returning, viz- M. Cattlebury will bake a lardy cake and one of his Carbonados and all the Dust Sheets which do cover things since the V. de Confolens comes no more here will be taken off. And do not think you must have any poor bed in a stable. You can sleep in a Comfortable Room, viz- The Olive, where once we tended on Mister Pearce.
Send us merely some word of the day of your Arrival -for reasons of M. Cattlebury's purchasing the beef and seasoning it for the Carbonado. Which word he awaits with great Eagerness, as do I,
your servant Wm. Gates.
The date I decided upon was the twenty-ninth day of April in this year of cold spring rains and fitful sunlight, 1667. Because I wanted to ride to Bidnold on Danseuse, the journey would take me several days, but I knew that I would savour each stage of it, no matter what weather I chanced upon, and that when I found myself at last under the enormous Norfolk sky, I would lift up my head and shout.
It rained on the day that Danseuse and I left London, but after that, as we went north-east, we came upon cloudless days.
As we traveled, I asked myself what changes I expected to find at Bidnold and I knew that what would be most visible to me would be the emptiness of the place, its lack of belonging. The Viscomte, as far as I could determine from Will's letters, had only ever used it as a place of entertainment and seduction. He had never inhabited it fully or bothered to grow fond of it and now he never visited it at all or paid the staff their wages. Will and Cattlebury had remained, paid by Babbacombe I assumed, but I imagined the gardeners and the grooms and the chambermaids and the scullery boys all drifting away, so that little by little the house and the garden and even the park would be falling to neglect and decay. I thought of Will's sadness at this. I saw his brown, creased face. I saw him plead with me to do something to halt the decline of a place that he loved as much as I, and heard myself inform him that I could do nothing at all, it being out of my hands now and quite outside my life.
I did not let these thoughts cast me down. In the whole journey I had hardly a moment of sadness and whenever we stopped for the night I lay long asleep, dreaming myself already there.
So we trot down into Bidnold village, past the Jovial Rushcutters and past the church, and then we make the left turn into the park through the great iron gates and Danseuse flicks her tail and gives a snort and the speed of her trot increases.
There is a fresh breeze and the shadows of fast-moving clouds sail across the grass. The chestnuts are in full candle-burst. A cluster of deer grazes under them and, as we come on, the animals raise their heads and look at us.
We round the curve in the drive and there it is: Bidnold Manor in the County of Norfolk, the house snatched from the Anti-Royalist, John Loseley, and given to me in return for my role as cuckold, the house where all my foolishness was contained, Merivels house.
I rein Danseuse in and slow her to a walk. We are now at the very spot where, one freezing morning, I began to run after Celia's coach and fell down on some ice and tore a pair of peach-coloured stockings. The parkland is moated here and beyond the moat is the south lawn with its great cedar trees and as we walk sedately forward I notice that the lawn is neatly clipped and edged and that round the cedars have been put carved stone benches.
My eye is on the front door now. I remember the heaviness of it and the gladness I always felt when it opened for me and I went in and heard it close at my back – as if I had known all along that the house would belong to me for only the briefest time.
The door opens now. Will Gates comes out and is followed by Cattlebury and the two of them stand side by side and look towards me with dazed expressions on their faces, as if they had been brought forth to witness the passage of Halley's Comet or some such peculiar wonder. This sight of them makes me smile and I call out: "Will! Cattlebury! Here I am!" but my voice does not carry to them for, although I think I am smiling, I am in fact crying like a child and cannot seem to get any hold upon myself to stop my tears which fall so fast and so abundantly that the whole scene before me trembles and moves and it is difficult to keep my balance on my horse.
She halts and I climb down and I see Will and Cattlebury hold out their hands, so I take them in mine, one in each, and hold very tightly to them and force out from my choked heart a burst of my old laughter.
"Sir," says Will, "you are got very thin."
I nod. I am endeavouring to speak.
"We will remedy it, Sir Robert," says Cattlebury, "with carbonados."
"Yes," I say. "We will. With carbonados."
I was mistaken when I imagined neglect and disrepair.
Though empty of any owner, each room at Bidnold appears clean and dusted and perfumed, as if in readiness to receive one.
Little remains of my vulgar decoration. The carpet from Chengchow is still in place upon the Withdrawing Room floor, all its colours cleaned and bright, but the walls are no longer red and gold; they are hung with a dove-grey damask and the scarlet sofas are gone. Yet the room is grander than before. Above the fireplace is a gilded Italian mirror. Every chair and footstool is upholstered in peach silks and Prussian blue velvets. Equestrian portraits (from which Doric columns and Sylvan glades are not entirely absent) grace the walls. There is a card table of maplewood, a chequer table of ebony and ivory, a spinette made by the Frenchman, Florent-Pasquier. At the windows the brocade drapes are heavy and rich.
"I did not imagine," I say to Will, as I look
round this beautiful room, "that the Viscomte was a person of such exquisite taste."
Will looks embarrassed. "Me," he says, "I liked all your scarlet and pink, Sir Robert."
I laugh. We go on into the Dining Room, scene of my candlelit suppers with Celia. My oak dining table is still in place, but the walls have been panelled and the ceiling carved and embossed and painted yellow and blue. It reminds me of a state room, forbidding almost in its formality, and again I remark to Will that the picture of the Viscomte I put together from his letters does not match that which I am forming of him now.
"Well," mumbles Will, "it probably would not, Sir, because in a letter you cannot tell all there is. You have to leave out a great deal, owing to briefness or lack of words."
"True, Will," I reply, "but you led me to believe he did not really care about the house, and in this I see that you were mistaken, for he has furnished it very finely."
Will shrugs his shoulders, upon which hangs a new rust-coloured coat. "He does not come here any more," he says, "and I hope he will not."
"Then what is to become of all these furnishings?"
"I do not know, Sir Robert."
"They are to lie shrouded in dust sheets for all time?"
"I cannot say."
"What, Will?"
"I cannot say whether they will be shrouded for all time."
"What were the orders given?"
"Beg pardon, Sir?"
"What orders did the Viscomte give regarding the furniture?"
"He gave none."
"None? He just left without any word?"
"Without so much as a word, Sir."
"Then he surely intends to return. He might return today, tonight, at any time."
Again, Will shrugs. His squirrel's eyes do not look at me. "He might, Sir. But I do not think that he will."
I abandon this conversation and I go with Will to the Olive Room, which is absolutely unchanged in every detail from the day when I sat in it for thirty-seven hours and watched over Pearce's sleep. The thought that I will sleep one night in it between cold linen sheets under the green canopy with its scarlet tassels is a very affecting one and I sit down upon the little window seat and thank Will for making this room ready for me. I feel tired suddenly and I know that in my tiredness I have, once again, begun to see and hear things that are not here. On the stairway, when my glance fell onto the hall, I fancied I saw a footman wearing livery glide silently from the door of the Morning Room to the kitchen passageway, and now, as I turn and look out at the sighing trees and flying shadows of the park, I seem to hear, very far off, the same whimpering of a dog that had once caused me to open the door of my rooms above the lute-maker and peer down into the dark.
It is the middle of the afternoon. I tell Will that I will rest for a little while. So he leaves me and closes the door. I do not sleep, or even shut my eyes, but lie and listen to the wind and marvel at where I am.
Though I feel somewhat solitary and foolish, Will and Cattlebury insist that supper is served in the Dining Room.
I have put on my blue and cream suit. I am not placed at the head of the table, where I used to sit, but at my right hand, as it were, as if I were my own favoured guest.
The room is lit by numberless candles.
"Blow some of them out, Will," I say. "I do not need a hundred pieces of light to eat a carbonado." But he refuses. "You were fond of light, Sir Robert," he says. "You used to tell me that."
The meal that Cattlebury has prepared for me is very rich and I disappoint him and Will by being unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls of it. I see these two men look at me and think, He is not like his former self, and it touches me to know that the old Merivel – so despised by Pearce and by Celia and causing such irritation to the King – was to them a person of substance.
The Burgundy wine I am offered smells of summer fruit, yet has so strong an effect upon my blood that when my meal is ended, I can hardly rise from the table, so heavy do my limbs feel.
"Lord," I say to Will, who helps me up, "it is as if old age had come upon me in the space of half an hour."
"You are tired, Sir, after your journey, that's all."
"Either that, Will," I reply, "or I'm dying."
"Well, Sir Robert, you cannot die in the Dining Room. It would be most horrid. So let us get you to your bed."
I tell Will that what I wish to do is to go out into the park, above which the clouds have sped away and uncovered a round white moon, and walk all round the house and take some breaths of the spring night. He looks at me and shakes his head, as if he believes the air will pierce my lungs like a knife, but I stumble out into the hall towards the door pulling him with me. "Come on, Will," I say, "for this is all I have, this one night."
I see the door open and then I stare out and I see a cold light falling across the lawn and I smell the earth. And then I do not remember anything more at all.
I wake under the green canopy. In the scarlet tassels hangs a sweet memory of Pearce.
The room is warm. I am wearing my nightshirt and my nightcap. I do not know what time it is, or what day, but seem to understand that I have slept for a long while.
I touch my face and find it very rough with stubble. I am a sight, I think, a terrible sight lately…
I draw back the bed curtains. On a little oak table is a china plate with a lardy cake upon it, and this discovery of the cake wakes in me a colossal hunger, as if I had not eaten for an entire week. So I cut myself a slice and cram it into my mouth with disgusting haste. Then I eat a second piece, dropping crumbs down my chin and onto my lap.
What I decide next is that the day upon which I have woken, whatever day it may be, is full of sunshine. I cannot see it yet, because this Olive Room faces north, but I know that, if I go to the front of the house, I will find it: a dazzling light.
So I leave the room, just as I am in my nightshirt with cake crumbs at the corner of my mouth, and go out onto the landing and, as I predicted, I see the sunlight falling upon the stairs. I stand and look down. And there, after a moment or two of blinking and rubbing my eyes and taking off my nightcap, I begin to see and hear a most peculiar commotion: the hall is full of dogs. There are seven or eight of them – little Spaniels like my poor Minette – and they are running in excited circles and yapping.
I try very hard to decide whether the dogs are truly there or not there at all except in my dilapidated mind, but I am quite unable to judge. I must go down, I tell myself, and try to touch one of them and, if it does not disappear or turn into a yellow scarf like the clump of primroses, then I will know that it is a living thing and not any hallucination.
I am barefoot, but the wood of the stairs, burnished by the sun, feels warm. And then I notice, as I go down, that the front door is open and I can see shadows on the gravel, as of people moving about, and somewhere in my brain, that has been so crammed with sleep, I know what this must signify and yet the meaning of it refuses to come to me except very slowly… so slowly… like an old memory that lies rusted and neglected and half hidden… and then I have reached the hall to call one of the dogs to me, but they all come, they all flock around me and jump up onto my legs and to my outstretched hand and wag their tails. I am surrounded by them. They are certainly real, Merivel, I inform myself, for two of them are biting the hem of your nightshirt and already you can hear it tearing. But I do not try to push the dogs away. I like their excitement. I think how sweet and pretty they are. So I start to play with them, dangling my nightcap towards them so that they jump high to try to bite it, then snatching it away and, as their yapping and frenzy increases with my teasing of them, I hear myself begin to laugh like a child.
And then a very long shadow falls across the golden floor and across me and across my laughter. At the same moment, one of the dogs starts to unwind the entire hem of my nightshirt. And then I look up. And I see the King.
Affecting not to notice that I was without my wig and unshaven and barefoot and wearing a torn nightshirt c
overed in cake crumbs, the King invited me, in a soft and gentle voice, to take a turn with him in the park.
While a cluster of liveried grooms and footmen – directed by Will, also strangely garbed in livery – unloaded a great many trunks and boxes from two magnificent coaches, we walked down the drive for a little way, then turned left into the grass towards a line of deer grazing in some shade. The dogs ran ahead of us, chasing each other and barking.
We had gone this far in silence. Then the King suddenly stopped and turned and looked back at the house.
"It is mine now," he said.
I looked at it. Bidnold Manor in the County of Norfolk…
"What, Sire?" I said.
"You heard me, Merivel. Now it belongs to me."
"To you…?"
"Yes."
"And the sale to the Vi -?"
"It was never paid for. Money was promised. Money I wished to use to fit out a ship. But it was never given. So Bidnold is to be a ship now."
"Be a ship?"
"Yes. Do you understand?"
"Not entirely…"
"It is to be my ship: in other words, the place in which, from time to time, I can sail away from care. Now you see it, n'est-ce pas? You, of all people, now you comprehend it, don't you Merivel? It is the place where I shall come to dream."